Heart Disease
High Blood Pressure
Getting control – diet and exercise
To control unnecessary risks, think about the overall health of your heart; reduce the workload on your heart and keep your heart healthy.
Exercise: keeping your heart in shape
Your heart is a muscle. Like any other muscle, it needs to stay active. That is one reason why exercise is such an important part of keeping healthy.
You should ask your doctor what exercise program is right for you. The most commonly stated goal for heart-healthy exercise is moderate exercise for 30 minutes four or five times a week.
Many people find that they are very good about exercising at first, but that after a while they find reasons to stop. You will find that it is easier to stay with an exercise program that includes an activity that you like to do — and one that fits into your daily routine. Variety will also help you stick with it — perhaps taking a long walk once or twice a week and playing tennis with a friend on weekends.
Go for variety, do what you like to do, do not start too suddenly.
Overall, enjoy!
Losing excess weight
Being overweight can often make hypertension worse. The body needs to circulate more blood, so the heart has to work harder. If your doctor thinks you need to lose weight, but you have had a hard time losing weight in the past, get some advice on dieting and exercise from your doctor — and, most importantly, follow it!
Tips for eating out
- Try broiled or baked, not fried, foods.
- Avoid creamy salad dressings.
- Skip the cheese appetizers.
- Ask for sauce or gravy on the side.
Controlling fat: a double bonus
Lowering fat in your diet, especially saturated fat, helps in two ways:
- It makes it easier for your body to lose weight.
- It helps lower your cholesterol.
Snack foods that are not junk foods
- Fruits and vegetables
- Fat-free, cholesterol-free cookies
- Unsalted pretzels
- Air-popped or low-fat microwave popcorn
- Juices
- Sorbet, sherbert, and nonfat yogurt
Avoiding excess salt
As anyone who has eaten a bag of salted pretzels knows, salt makes your body want water. When the sodium in salt gets into your bloodstream, it pulls water in. This extra fluid can raise blood pressure and make your heart work harder — harder than it has to. The trick is to "watch the sodium".
Watching for hidden salt
- Check labels on processed foods like canned soups, sauces and gravies, and frozen dinners.
- Look for low-sodium or low-salt alternatives.
Some people can eat huge amounts of salt and still have normal blood pressure; others, who eat very little salt, have high blood pressure. There is no way to know whose blood pressure is sensitive to salt or sodium without giving a salt-restricted diet an adequate try. If your high blood pressure is sensitive to sodium, then you should continue to cut down on salt.
Seasonings other than salt can keep food flavourful. The key is to watch out for salt that is in prepared foods that you use in cooking, like canned soups. You do not have to give up eating well in order to live well.
